


Of Childish Hopes

by hail_writes



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Loki Series fic, The TVA sucks, Time Variance Authority - Freeform, timeline screwups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hail_writes/pseuds/hail_writes
Summary: After Loki was captured by the Time Variance Authority, he thought he was immune to surprises. What he didn’t know, though, is that the TVA had one last card up their sleeve.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Of Childish Hopes

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks! Just a warning that I'm still trying to figure out AO3, so i haven't been responding to comments on any my works haha. That being said, here's a little fic for the Loki series fans!

The first time she visited him, Loki Laufeyson was confused.  
The Time Variance Authority had managed to capture him a few weeks prior, locking him up in a dismal cell with too many security measures that he deemed unnecessary. Since then, it's been a daily routine: wake up, eat, change, and then be chained to a metal table and interrogated for the rest of the day. There, they only talked about the Tesseract and his faults in "creating too many timelines," and not much else.  
It was mundane. Irritating, even.  
That is, until the woman walked in.  
The TVA had been quite brainless to give him the same few interrogators that they rotated through daily. All male, all spineless, and all _too_ easy to intimidate. So when a woman walked through the doors to the interrogation room--if he was honest with himself, he was caught a bit by surprise.  
Through the blinding light of the lamp overhead, he was able to tell that she was quite fair--well, she _would_ have been, had she not have been adorned with purple beneath her eyes and a miserable expression upon her face. Frankly, she looked as if she had gotten run over by a Frost Beast, straight from the Jotunheim caves.  
But still . . .  
She looked _familiar_. Surely, he'd met her before.  
He didn't know from where, though. Or when, for that matter.  
"Hello, Loki." Her voice was soft, but her words were forced. As if she didn't want to speak to them at all. Loki really didn't know what to say to that--he wasn't fond of _greetings_ , anyways. He resorted to biting instead.  
"If you're here to seduce me into giving information, I guarantee you that your men have already _tried_ \--"  
The woman, having pulled a metal chair up to the table, huffed a laugh. "Why am I not surprised you would say that," she said, more to herself than anything.  
Loki waited, raising an eyebrow as she steeled herself. Then she leaned forward slightly, bracing her hands against the table, letting the light flash against something _very_ familiar adorning her finger--  
With the free hand not currently chained to the table, Loki lunged forward and snatched her by the wrist. Surely enough, it wasn't a trick of the light--it was his _mother's ring_ , fit snugly upon her finger, and not on his _own mother's hand_ \--  
Loki swallowed back the thickness in his throat.  
"Where did you get this," he ground out. He clenched her wrist a little harder, just to get his point across. She winced, but oddly didn't react more.  
"Let go, Loki," she breathed. Loki could sense the desperation in her tone, watching as her own hand began to change color.  
But no. That was his _mother's_. Who was this pathetic little human girl to _steal_ such a thing--  
"Let go and I'll explain everything," she begged. For the first time, she matched his gaze, and something flashed in them that felt so strangely familiar--  
Loki relented.  
The woman snatched her hand back, rubbing it as blood rushed back into her fingertips. For a moment, she fiddled with the ring--but then retracted her hand, as soon as she saw Loki's pointed stare.  
"Well?" Loki snapped, sweeping his hand out expectantly.  
For a moment, he waited as she took a bated breath and closed her eyes--steeling herself, yet again. When she finally opened them, she stared directly into his own.  
"My name is Nova," she said. "I'm your wife."  
Loki paused. And then he dropped his hand.  
_That_ was new.  
Back in his princely days, he'd often gotten ragingly drunk and done things he'd later regret. Women--and men--were often part of that equation. But lately, he hadn't touched a sip of mead, and there weren't many people to _talk_ to in his excursions, let alone _wed_ \--  
"I'm sorry," he said, "Last I checked, I don't recall courting a _human_."  
Nova raised her hand, a playful fire alight in her eyes that he hadn't seen yet. "Let me speak, dear," she said--and then promptly retracted, biting her lip. "Sorry. Pet name."  
Something twanged in Loki's chest at that. He chose to ignore it.  
"I'm not your wife _here_ , per say," she began, before pausing again and sighing. "Look--I know they've talked to you about what you've done with the Tesseract, and how that cube sliding to you in New York wasn't supposed to happen . . ." Loki nodded, and she continued. "Good. Well, what they _didn't_ tell you about was what was supposed to happen, had you not taken the stone. What really happens to you."  
_What really happens to you._  
Why did she sound so hopeless?  
". . . Go on," Loki said.  
Nova hesitated, her gaze flickering between his eyes. In her own, all he could see was _exhaustion_. Despair. Pain.  
And then she began, telling him of everything that happened after New York. How his mother died during the Convergence, how he usurped the throne and became king, and how Hela, his sister, destroyed Asgard and the people escaped. How his brother became king, then, and their relationship finally began to mend. And then how, along that path, he found her. How they fell in love, _hard_ , and how he palmed his mother's ring for _years_ until he finally offered her his hand on Asgard's ship--  
As she spoke, her face was soft, nostalgic. And then it dropped.  
"We never got married, though. We planned to, after Asgard's people were settled."  
Silence fell, swallowing up the room as Loki's stomach twisted.  
_What really happens to you_.  
"What happened, Nova?" he asked. Softly, quietly, as if approaching a timid fawn.  
Shaking, Nova traced her ring. "Thanos," she said.  
Loki's blood ran cold, trapped in his own veins.  
_Thanos. Thanos. Thanos._  
"He was on the hunt for the stones, and he attacked the ship. He killed half of the people that were there. And you tried to stop him, to protect _me_ \--" She bit her lip, hard enough for it to bleed, and Loki could see how much she was fighting not to tremble.  
But all that was running through his head was that name.  
Thanos got to him. In another time, another life, sure--but nonetheless, the wretched, sadistic beast _found him_ \--  
"Why are you here?" he asked, pushing it through his own fear clogging up his thoughts. He forced his face to remain impassive, calm. He felt anything but.  
_That,_ evidently, seemed like it was easier for her to answer. "The TVA found me, after everything. They brought me back, to try to convince you to fix the timelines you . . . messed up."  
Of course they would.  
Of _course_ they would bring in this woman, his alternate self's _wife_ , pulling her out of time and forcing her to clean up his mess--  
"No," he said. He had already wreaked too much havoc, anyways. The TVA would likely kill him the moment he straightened it all up. And this woman, _Nova_ . . . Though he didn't want to believe her, it made too much sense. And something deep inside him, slumbering and warm, knew she was telling the truth. And that truth hadn't been kind to her.  
"Loki, _please_ \--"  
"No," he said again, more flippantly this time. "If you are who you say you are, they shouldn't have brought you here nor gotten you involved in any of this. Besides, it's too much effort to slave after a bureaucracy that seems only fit to punish me in the end," he added.  
Nova seemed desperate. "Loki, you don't understand--"  
From the loudspeakers in the corners of the room, a buzzer sounded. A couple of guards filed into the room, lifting Nova up by her forearms and escorting her out. She protested the entire way.  
"Goodbye, Nova," he said. Her name felt . . . _pleasant_ , on his tongue.  
He hoped though, for her sake, to never see her again.

* * *

The second time she visited him, it was after hours and in his own cell. She appeared late in the evening, holding two green fruits up to the force field that held him captive.  
Even in the dim light, he could see her timid smile. "I brought your favorite," she said.  
It was true--he did have an uncanny fondness for pears. The fact that she knew that, though, settled in his stomach wrong.  
 _Wife_ , he reminded himself.  
He swallowed thickly. "You're not allowed to be here, I presume."  
She grinned. "Nope." Something in his chest warmed at that. Pride, perhaps.  
Slowly he stood, taking measured steps to the force field separating them. "And how, do tell, do you plan on getting inside?" He flicked the blue aura in front of him for good measure, burning the tips of his fingers in the aftermath.  
Nova rolled her eyes at that. "You genuinely think you married an imbecile, Loki? Of course I know," she said, chuckling. And sure enough, as she pressed her hand against the force field, it didn't scorch her. Instead, the imprint of her palm flashed green, allowing her access.  
"Hacked into the system," she said flippantly, stepping through the barrier with a wink. She tossed him his pear.  
Loki hummed as she collapsed atop his bed, throwing his blanket over her thighs and setting the pear by her feet.  
 _Green suits her,_ he thought, before instantly shoving it out of his mind.  
"Why are you here," he demanded instead. He kept himself a few feet away--for her sake, at the very least.  
Nova shrugged. "Couldn't sleep," was all she said. It was obvious that that wasn’t the reason, though--so he waited, staring at her until she slowly collapsed in on herself.  
She closed her eyes, swallowing thickly. “Can you . . . come here? Please?”  
If he heeded the common sense belting its chords within him, he would have remained where he was. He would have demanded she leave, saving herself from the grief that was likely consuming her in front of him. He would have ignored her entirely, detangling himself from her finger and forcing her out of his own mind.  
But lately, Loki had been more in tune with his rash persona. Common sense was a title claimed by bland heroism, anyways--and Loki was far from heroic.  
So he shoved logic to the wayside and sat by Nova, his pear long forgotten, watching as she seemed to slowly fall apart. But as she crumbled, she seemed to _relax_ , too. As if her broken pieces gave her, uncannily enough, some semblance of comfort.  
“Can I be honest with you, Loki?” she asked. Her gaze, though sometimes flickering to his form, remained on the barrier separating them from the outside world.  
“Always,” he said. It was surprising how quickly the words came to his mouth.  
Slowly, cautiously, Nova plucked one of his hands from his lap and placed it on her own. Her hands encased his, slowly tracing the lines and creases of his palm. She was oddly cool to the touch--something that Loki didn’t take lightly. Usually, humans radiated heat like a blazing furnace. But she was soft, and her touches were light--and strangely _comforting_ , despite his distaste for human contact--so he didn’t mention it.  
“I wish I never met you,” she eventually whispered. A stone-like weight fell into his stomach, but she didn’t wait until it landed to speak again. “It is . . . _so_ hard to see you, knowing that you’re not . . .”  
“Him?” Loki finished, allowing her to hold onto his hand like a lifeline. Loki was not _him_ : the Loki she was in love with, the Loki she courted. The Loki that, if he assumed correctly, became as soft as Asgardian silks and as pliable as child-made putty. The Loki that, in his own form of heroism, had died.  
No, he was not _her_ Loki. And she had every right to despise him for that.  
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said after a long pause. And one glance at her told him everything--a soft smile played on her face, betrayed by the loneliness in her eyes. “You’re not mine,” she said. “But you’re so much like him that it makes me sick.”  
“Then why are you here?” Loki spouted, much too consumed in the way she held his hand to give much thought to his words. But his comment made her retract, and she leaned back slightly as if he raked his own hand across her face.  
“I don’t know,” she eventually said.  
 _Liar_ , he thought. She was visiting him because either she wanted to pry him open herself in some morbid version of curiosity, or if she simply loathed herself enough to enforce her own punishment. Either way, she wasn’t here to be healed.  
Loki stared at her until she gave in. “Because I love you,” she said simply. And it didn’t sound joyous or romantic, the words dripping from her mouth like fresh honey. No, it sounded tired, and sad, and it fell out broken. As if the mere thought of it drove a knife into her chest and twisted it.  
In some curious, depressing sort of way, Loki understood.  
This woman--this _wife_ of his--was damned, cursed by the gods to meet someone she loved but could not have. She needed healing, and Loki wasn’t the one to give it to her.  
But he could dull the pain, if he wished. If only for a moment.  
“Sleep,” Loki said.  
Nova stared at him, as if not fully convinced of his words, until he spoke again. “You need to rest. Sleep.” And then he stood and stepped aside, lowering himself to the floor adjacent to the bed itself.  
Nova didn’t need to be told a third time, kicking off her shoes and collapsing atop his blankets and pillows. In less than a minute, she was asleep.  
And as she rested, Loki stared at her ring as it reflected moonlight against the wall, and he _laughed_.  
How cruel it was, for the gods to taunt her with a mirage of her love. And how cruel it was, for them to play with his own childish hopes of domesticity and shape it into a slumbering woman at his side.  
But Loki was a walking curse, after all. He should have seen it coming. 

* * *

Nova visited him every night for a week.  
The TVA still kept him to his interrogation schedule, sometimes including Nova herself to beg him to return the Tesseract. But her pleadings were bland, flat, as if she didn’t want to be asking him about it either, and she didn’t complain about his lack of a response.  
At night, though, they didn’t mention the Tesseract.  
Instead, they talked about each other--about her upbringing, _her_ Loki, and the stories from his own past that she didn’t know already. And with each tale she told and each memory he shared, she seemed to become _lighter_. Happier.  
Loki didn’t deny that he enjoyed her company, much more than he should.  
That night, she had brought him a basket of pears, mixed with some other goodies that he fancied. _Anniversary present_ , she told him. _A week of mismatched friendship._  
“I’ll never understand your love for these,” she was saying, sprawled amongst his pillows as if she owned the room. “They’re so . . . _weird_.” Overhead, she tossed her pear around, giggling as Loki consumed his stash at her feet.  
“They’re the gift of the gods,” Loki snapped, swiping the fruit from her hands and placing it in his basket. She had long since voiced her distaste for pears, much to Loki’s complete offence.  
“You’re so pretentious,” Nova laughed. Sitting up, she patted Loki on the head in playfulness--evidently something that she didn’t think through, as she swiped her hand back faster than she moved it forward. Loki brushed it off, instead running a hand through his locks to fix it.  
“I used to joke about you having extensions,” Nova commented, eying the curls that framed his face. “Your hair was always so long and wellkept. Now I’m starting to think it’s true.”  
Loki scoffed as she giggled. “You truly think so little of me?” he jested.  
Nova stood, still laughing as she spread her legs. “Well, you were obsessed with your appearance, dear. One would think you would rather be caught dead than disheveled.”  
Now Loki was intrigued, raising a brow as she rambled on. “You always wore the finest shirts, along with some weird version of leather pants that you _claimed_ were Asgardian; I couldn’t get you in jeans to save my _life._ And don’t get me _started_ on how you did your hair, especially when it grew past your shoulders--”  
Loki was still fighting a chuckle as he snapped his fingers, lengthening out his hair and changing his clothes in the blink of an eye. “Like this?”  
She turned around, still grinning from her speech. And then when she saw him, Loki instantly regretted doing anything at all.  
Her face dropped and Loki could only stare as she froze in place.  
“. . . Yes,” she said softly. “Just like that.”  
Loki felt guilt pooling in his gut like spoiled wine. If his tongue didn’t feel like lead, he would have apologized. But then he saw her breathing catch and tears gloss her eyes as she blinked them back, and he walked towards her without a second thought. Words piled behind his lips--but his silver tongue did nothing to sort them out.  
When he was close enough, Nova reached out blindly, grasping his arms as her eyes squeezed shut. “It’s not your fault,” she spouted, seemingly more to herself than him. “You didn’t know.”  
 _Still doesn’t excuse it,_ he thought. Nothing ever really excused his actions.  
He let her breathe for a while, clutching his arms like a lifeline and trembling like a newborn fawn. Eventually, though, she calmed, though she didn’t open her eyes.  
“Look at me,” Loki said. He still hadn’t dropped the illusion--seeing him would be good for her. It would help her heal, help her begin to let her departed love go.  
At least, that was what he told himself.  
She swallowed thickly, audibly. “No,” she said.  
“Why not?”  
Squeezing his biceps briefly, Nova let out a strangled sound. “Because if I open my eyes and look at you, then I am going to kiss you, and I am never going to let you go.”  
Loki paused.  
 _Would that be so bad?_  
In that moment he nearly laughed again, cursing the Norns for bringing him _her_ : his retribution, his downfall. And someone he wanted to keep so, so badly.  
So slowly, he dropped his illusion, tilting her chin up and waiting until she looked at him again. She sagged in relief at his appearance.  
“This isn’t fair,” she told him. But she stepped forward nonetheless, letting him slip his hand to the crook of her neck. Let him lean towards her, throwing caution to the wind as he rested his forehead against her own.  
“No, it’s not.” Because it wasn’t fair, to either of them. It was torturous, and it was cruel, and it made him feel things he would much rather avoid.  
But he kissed her regardless.  
He brushed his lips against her own until she fell into him, slipping one hand into his hair and clutching the fabric on his chest with her other. He could feel her tears against his own cheeks and the trembling of her frame in his arms--but the only thing he could think of was her hand in his hair, and her lips against his, and how much she tasted, she _felt_ , like home.  
He didn’t know what to think of it.  
Even when she pulled away, burying her head in the crook of his neck, he couldn’t shake it--the odd, nagging feeling at the bottom of his chest that begged him to _keep_ her.  
He couldn’t, though. She needed to go somewhere better, somewhere safer, and he needed to face the damnation that he reaped himself.  
But that could happen later, after he finished kissing her and imagining things that weren’t meant to be his.  
Later.

* * *

After that night, Nova stopped visiting.  
At first, Loki brushed it off, considering how frazzled she had been over the past week’s events. So he allowed a few days of her absence. But then those two days shifted into three, then four, and then another _week_ \--and still, not so much as a wave, a glance, a _presence_. She hadn’t appeared in his interrogations, either.  
After the second week, he began to wonder if she was dead.  
Though he didn’t like it, it seemed plausible. The TVA were a clan of stone cold brutes, anyways; it was incredibly unlikely that they let her go out of her own volition.  
The thought of her--cold, lifeless, at the hands of some twisted bureaucracy--didn’t sit well with him. It didn’t sit with him at _all,_ really--so he pushed it off, forcing the image into the back of his thoughts and burying it under a lock and key.  
And there it remained, until he was woken from his slumber three weeks later with an aggressive shove.  
“Wake _up,_ ” a voice demanded, its source uncomfortably close to his ear. “Get up, Loki.”  
It took him much too long to recognize the voice--but once he did, he shot up, and knocked into her in the process.  
Nova leaned back on her knees, cradling her head with one hand. “ _Ow._ Give a girl a warning, will ya?”  
In his sleep-addled state, Loki managed to chuckle through everything that was plaguing him.  
 _I thought you were dead,_ he wanted to say.  
“Why are you here?” he said instead.  
He blinked until her form cleared, revealing her wild curls and her disarrayed clothes--  
And a bruise, sprawling across her cheekbone. Her knuckles were bloody, too.  
His hearing slowed to a halt, and he didn’t notice she was speaking until he looked at her mouth. “We need to get you ou--”  
“What did they do to you?” he cut off, the words leaking from his mouth in a hiss.  
At his snap, Nova retracted a bit. Her hand instantly pulled at her sleeve, trying to straighten herself up.  
 _What did they do?_  
Nova puffed out her cheeks, slowly letting the air seep from her lips. “It doesn’t matter,” she eventually said.  
Loki ignored her, reaching forward and tracing the discoloration on her cheek. She didn’t so much as flinch--but still, Loki’s blood was still boiling. Other than chaining him up, the TVA hadn’t laid a _finger_ on Loki since he arrived here. And yet they harmed _her,_ of all people--  
“What did they do,” he ground out again.  
He didn’t know his hands were clenched until Nova grasped at his fingers, slowly pulling them from his palm. “Don’t worry,” she chided. She tugged at him until he was standing before releasing him and backing up towards the barrier.  
“We need to leave,” she said, the barrier’s blue aura lighting her skin as she stepped through. “I found the Tesseract. We need to get you out.”  
Loki stopped.  
Though he wanted to leave and bury this compound in the dirt, he knew it wouldn’t be that simple. The TVA had cameras on every corner and guards in every hall, and mountains upon _mountains_ of intergalactic weapons at their disposal--  
If he had access to his full magic capabilities, he would whisk the both of them out at a moment's notice. But the TVA had found a way to drain him, leaving him as powerless as any other Asgardian. Attempting an escape like that would be too risky--especially for a mortal.  
“No,” Loki stated, coming to a halt just a hair’s breadth away from the barrier. The wall thrummed with energy, nearly biting at him.  
 _One wrong move, and you’re dead, Nova._  
He wouldn’t have an innocent’s blood on his hands.  
Though Loki forced impassiveness onto his face, Nova seemed to read right through it. Her face softened. “I need you to trust me, Loki,” she whispered.  
Loki didn’t budge until a quiet laugh bubbled through her.  
“I have a distraction, and I found a few employees that hate this place as much as we do. You’ll be fine,” she swore.  
Loki paused for a moment, considering.  
It wasn’t until he glanced at the ring on her finger that he surrendered. _Wife,_ he reminded himself again.  
His other self trusted her. What kept him from doing the same?  
“Fine,” Loki muttered eventually, steeling himself as he crossed his arms. “When do we start?”  
Nova snickered, pressing her palm flat against the barrier as she pulled a peculiar device from her pocket.  
“Now,” she said, much too nonchalantly--because with one squeeze of the device, the barrier fell and all the lights turned to a bleeding red. In the corners of his cell, he noticed the cameras grow dark. The sirens began to blare not long after that, and Nova giggled again.  
Stepping through where the barrier once was felt _freeing_ \--much too freeing than what he would have preferred, given the circumstances, but it didn’t matter. He was already running.  
“Past the interrogation room,” Nova called, a few steps behind him as he sprinted down the hall. At that, Loki scoffed--the TVA had always blindfolded Loki as they transferred him from room to cell, but it made little difference; Loki wasn’t a dimwit.  
And so they ran, avoiding the shouts of sentries for as long as they could until confrontation was inevitable. They made it a few turns away from the interrogation room when a handful of guards spotted them--surprisingly later than he expected. Loki took no thought to pounce on them before they could draw their weapons, slamming one’s head against the wall and kicking another’s knees out from under him. In a few strokes, three more were down, collapsed in a pile at Loki’s feet.  
He didn’t fight the grin that pulled at his lips.  
In front of him, Nova pulled a gun from the waistband of a sentinel’s slacks, checking the magazine and cocking it before turning to him. Her eyes went wide.  
“ _Duck!_ ” she yelled, not waiting for him to crouch to the floor to shoot two sprinting guards. Another one rounded the corner behind her--but Loki didn’t need so much as move before she was pivoting on her heel, shooting the third one down.  
“Clear,” she said. She picked up another gun by the barrel and handed it to Loki before speeding up into a run again, Loki following close behind.  
A few more sentries tried to block them along the way, but it wasn’t more than they could handle--and soon they were running past the interrogation room, the dim overhead light still shining through the window.  
Loki shot the glass as he ran by, just for good measure.  
In front of him, Nova leaned left--but abruptly stopped, sliding on her heel and slamming herself up against the wall. Loki soon followed, hearing the shouts of a group of soldiers coming their way.  
At his side, Nova cursed--but then here eyes lit up with an idea. “Crouch down,” she demanded, ignoring Loki’s scrunched brows. “When they get close enough, I want you to throw me.”  
Loki nearly laughed, but did as she said nonetheless. _Well, that’s_ one _way to catch them off guard._  
And true to her word, she spun on her heel, jogging down the hallway a bit and sprinting towards him when the guards came close enough. She stepped onto Loki’s intertwined hands and he shoved her foot up, sending her leaping over him--and, subsequently, onto the shoulders of an oncoming sentry. She twisted herself around as she fell, bringing him down by his neck and shooting a few others along the way. She managed to roll out of the way of a few oncoming bullets--but not before Loki slid in, grasping both guards’ guns and squeezing until they snapped in half.  
“Evening, gentlemen,” Loki simpered, giving them both a wink before reaching up and knocking their heads together. They collapsed instantly, giving Loki enough time to flip around and down the last guard. Nova stood a few feet away, grinning.  
“You obviously didn’t end up changing your fighting commentary,” she teased, dropping her now empty pistol and replacing it with another. Loki scoffed.  
They didn’t encounter much after that as they twisted and turned throughout the halls, eventually stumbling upon a stairwell.  
Nova yanked open the door. “Down to the basement, and then it’s a straight shot there,” she said, quieting down as her voice began to echo.  
Loki stepped through and trotted to the railing, looking down to see over seven floors worth of stairs below. Nova was already sprinting down them--so he soon followed, picking up his pace as a door a few floors above ripped open. _Floods_ of sentinels came through--some sprinting down the staircase in hopes to catch them both, and others lining the railing and shooting. Loki managed to yank Nova to his side as a bullet very nearly sliced through her.  
They managed to make it down three more flights before a door below them--the main floor, from what he could gather--burst open with a _clang._ Even more guards piled through, arms at the ready. They were surrounded.  
That is, until Loki lit up with an idea.  
He swirled around, backing up until he and Nova were both against the wall, and then, before Nova could protest, he scooped her up, swiveled on his heel, and sprinted for the railing.  
Then he was falling, and the soldiers from the main floor became a passing blur as he dropped.  
The concrete below him cracked as he landed.  
Nova, still clutching at his neck, was breathing heavily as Loki set her down. “ _Warn me,_ ” she snapped halfheartedly, hands on her knees. Loki shrugged and yanked her through the door as bullets began to rain down the stairwell.  
She wasn’t exaggerating when she said it was a straight shot down the hallway, much to Loki’s surprise. At the farthest end of the hall resided two large doors, painted a bright red, cracked open slightly. A bright, familiar blue light shone through. Four sentinels guarded the doorway--that were quickly shot down, collapsing in front of the entryway.  
Loki managed to kick the doors open and push Nova through before more sentries flooded the hallway, slamming it closed behind him, twisting the metal handles together, and breaking the hinges.  
“ _Hands up!_ ” Nova yelled, aiming her gun at the few people in the room that still resided--all scientists, presumably, given how much they were poking and prodding at the Tesseract in the center of the room. One in the far corner tried to shoot them with a nearby pistol, but was quickly shot down. The rest seemed far too compliant for Loki’s tastes--but they all dropped their devices and kneeled on the floor, so he didn’t bother questioning it.  
Loki was already climbing the steps of the pedestal the cube sat on before Nova lowered her gun. He didn’t fight the grin that broke out on his face--nor did he stifle the dread that simultaneously spread through him.  
He loathed the Tesseract--every sin that it made him do, every trauma that it conjured up. But still, it was the one thing that saved him from a lifetime of torture from the hands of a titan.  
It was his redemption, but it also was his downfall. How ironic.  
So, suppressing both his terror and delight, Loki grasped the cube and opened up a portal. To where, he didn’t know. Just . . . somewhere _else_ was all he needed.  
Nova stepped to his side, her gun still at the ready, when he looked to her.  
She matched his gaze. “Go already,” she chided. “I have an escape route. _Go_.”  
He didn’t question her and stepped forward, clutching the Tesseract between his fingers as he put one foot through the portal.  
He paused. Something in his chest began to twist--something that didn’t sit right with him, though he hated it.  
“What are you waiting for?” Nova called, looking over her shoulder long enough to show how confused she was. “ _Go,_ Loki!”  
And then he was spitting the words out before he could think twice. “Come with me,” he said, retracting his foot from the portal and spinning on his heel.  
Because the idea of leaving this woman, this _wife_ of his, in a building full of people who would rather hurt her than help her . . . he wouldn’t do such a thing. He was corrupted, and he was unredeemable, but _still_. He wouldn’t abandon the love of his life.  
Even though it wasn’t _his_ life, exactly.  
Nova was staring at him blankly as he held out a hand. “. . . _What?_ ”  
“Come with me,” he repeated, slowly backing towards the portal, “before I change my mind.” He winked, just for good measure.  
And he watched as Nova paused, swiveling her head back and forth between his hand and the people still kneeling on the floor. Distantly, he could hear the door slowly collapse from the banging on the other side, shifting under pressure.  
Slowly, she breathed, closing her eyes. Steeling herself, once again.  
And when she opened them, she dropped her gun to the floor, and she took his hand.  
“Okay.”


End file.
